An Interesting Dinner

Rob and I decided go try out American Flatbread tonight. We've heard good things about it and have wanted to try it out, so we made the 25 minute journey to Ashburn for dinner.

The place has a cool set-up — tables are scattered around and almost everyone has a good view of the pizza oven, which is built up in kind of an adobe style. It wasn't too crowded yet when we arrived.

We hit our first bump in the road when the ice tea I'd ordered came with an extra something lovely floating in the glass. Ice tea #2 arrived, but without the straw I'd requested. When our waitress remembered, she compensated by bringing me two!

Rob and I split a nice salad with Boston bibb lettuce, bacon, tomatoes and ranch, topped with a slice of seasoned flatbread. Very good.

Next bump in the road... one of the plates delivered to our table for our pizza (they call it flatbread, but it's a pizza!) was dirty. Sending it back for a clean one...

Here's where it got interesting. We were seated at a table with a great view of the oven and the counter where the pizza-guy placed the pies for cutting and sliding onto trays for serving. Our waitress sliced our pizza and proceeded to nearly fold it in half as she slid it onto the tray. One piece actually fell off onto the counter, and she and a co-worker were man-handling the thing (bare-handed) to try to save it. Nice!

Finally, a manager comes walking over to see what was going on. She immediately sent the mangled pie to the back and came over to our table to explain that they were making a new one for us, which came about 10 minutes later.

I have to say that, despite the bumps, the pizza was good! Rob and I shared a "New Virginia Sausage" pie, which had local homemade sausage, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms and caramelized onions. All of the pizza ingredients at American Flatbread are locally grown and organic. We both had our fill and brought home 1/3 of the pizza as leftovers.

Overall verdict: we'd go back, but hope that we have a smoother visit next time!